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Tories and Grits

Re Harper Must Aim For A Majority Or Bust (Dec. 22): Five simple things our Prime Minister needs to do to get another majority:

1) Institute an inquiry into missing aboriginal women;

2) Legalize marijuana;

3) Ban asbestos exports;

4) Fire Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino;

5) Call Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Daniel J. Christie, Port Hope, Ont.

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Re Testing The Conservative Faith (editorial, Dec. 20): You hit the nail on the head. Vision and technique are two different things.

A Conservative, almost by definition, should know what it is we want to conserve and why it is valuable to do so. A rallying cry of "but whatever it is we want to achieve, we're going to do it with lower taxes and less government" doesn't hold water.

Where are the Conservative visionaries? Where, for that matter, are the Conservatives who want to get re-elected?

David Simmonds, Wellington, Ont.

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Conservatism has successfully eclipsed the Canadian form of social democracy, which Alex Himelfarb recalled with such melancholy (Alex Himelfarb On Austerity, Inequality And 'Trickle-Down Meanness' – Focus, Dec. 20). The social advances of the post-war period, especially during the Pearson and Trudeau years, which Liberals assert reflect Canada's fundamental nature, were undone by inherent and environmental factors, among them: overspending by entitled governments, inflation and globalism.

Today's Liberals, dedicated to nothing more stirring than the defeat of the Harper government, offer no path back, only conservative-lite. In effect, Canada has slipped back to its natural, laissez-faire state.

Stephen Harper's achievement is that resistance, noisy as it is, nibbles only at the tail end of the movement he leads. Deep intervention by the state in social welfare was a 25-year anomaly in Canada, beginning a decade later than in Britain and Europe and declining, through successive governments of every stripe, from about 1980.

A generation later, we are all conservatives now.

David Lemon, Vancouver

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Attack on The Hill

Re Commons Security, RCMP At Odds Over Ottawa Attack (Dec. 22): My strong impression after reading this article was of a group of children in a sandbox not sharing their toys. The lack of co-ordination is a security threat, so let's stop pointing fingers and spending time on pinpointing who exactly delivered the fatal shot to the Parliament Hill gunman and work on fixing the problems.

Also, an executive summary of the investigations into security on The Hill should be released. Failure to do so would smell of people covering their own culpability.

Paul D. Leney, Calgary

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With all due respect to Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers and all the other officers who engaged in the firefight with Parliament Hill gunman Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, for me the hero that day was Constable Samearn Son.

Unarmed, Constable Son confronted the attacker when he first entered the building, grabbed his gun, delaying him, and called out a warning to the others. He took a bullet, which could easily have been fatal. I was so happy when the Speaker of the House singled him out for special recognition.

Grafton Ross, Ottawa

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Squeezed on price

Re Supplier Squeeze: Loblaw In The Spotlight Over Pricing Practices (Report on Business, Dec. 20): While I cannot imagine a day when retailers will be lined up to receive medals in the pricing wars, if we consumers are benefiting, I'd prefer to see the Competition Bureau chasing others. If something more Machiavellian is at work, I'd like to know that, too.

Many of us feel that being "Wal-Mart shoppers" is beneath us, but we meet regularly, sneaking in late at night to enjoy their lower prices. Wal-Mart suppliers are said to be among the most price-pressured anywhere, but do we consumers really care?

Much better to enter the front door of a Canadian company with competitive prices with our heads up.

All this is offered from the perspective of someone living where grocery prices are among the highest in the country.

George Asquith, Whitehorse

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Interview suspended

Re U.S. Considers Sanctions After Sony Attack (Dec. 22): Instead of an American comedy about North Korea – Sony Pictures' The Interview – what if 30 years ago Canada had made a funny movie about president Ronald Reagan being assassinated and showing his head being blown apart?

What would the Americans have said? President Barack Obama would now be restoring relations with us, not Cuba.

M.H. Brown, Vancouver

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Vaccine misspending

Re There's No Point Trying To Outscream Anti-Vaxxers (Dec. 22): You write, "The HPV vaccine, available to adolescent girls and boys and shown to be useful preventing numerous types of cancer, is still ridiculously controversial on the grounds that it might … encourage teenagers to have sex."

Health advocates like me do not object to the money spent on this free program because of the potential for early sexual activity, but rather on the premise that it is a poor use of scarce health dollars.

HPV is mostly self-limiting: some 90 per cent of people infected will clear the virus within two years. High-risk types like HPV 16 and 18, in the presence of co-factors like smoking, can indeed lead to cancer, including cervical, vulvar and anal cancer.

Pap screening has caused a monumental decline in cervical cancer because follow-up and treatment result in the vast majority of cervical abnormalities not progressing to cancer. There is no cervical cancer epidemic in Canada.

There are, however, populations that are more likely to get cervical cancer, in particular, aboriginal women, marginalized women and poor women who are less likely to be screened and/or benefit from follow-up and treatment.

Lumping HPV vaccine with childhood vaccines is an apple-and-orange comparison.

Lyba Spring, Toronto

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Irritating, indeed

John Doyle has presented his list of the Top 10 Most Irritating Canadians 2014 (TV-Related) (Life & Arts, Dec. 22).

May I present my list of the Top 10 most irritating Canadians on radio – except I only need one Canadian to cover all 10 spots on the list. And that person is that most irritating individual on CBC Radio who announces, with the excruciating repetition of water torture, that "Canada Lives Here."

And just what does "Canada Lives Here" mean anyway?

Craig Gordon, Fonthill, Ont.

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Most irritating Canadians on TV? What about the clowns and trained seals headlining the Question Period circus?

Rod Yellon, Winnipeg

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